A leading figure in the art world for four decades, Terry Winters became well known in the 1980s for his materially-conscious drawings and paintings. Representing the patterns and schema that undergird physical and intellectual life—French philosopher Gilles Deleuze is cited as an important reference—Winters’s drawings of grids, networks, and knots illustrate complex encounters between biological drives, technological systems, and mental processes. The Drawing Center’s Main Gallery presents an overview of Winters’s drawings from 1980 to the present including full cycles of drawings as well as a selection of large-scale works on paper that foreground the overarching theme of Winters’s practice: the desire to make sense, however fictively, of the manner in which the visible world is constructed and received. Rather than offering a comprehensive drawing retrospective, the show is organized with an eye to morphological relationships so that, as viewers move through the gallery, they recall and ideally return to earlier related images.

Bulwark

Praised for their meticulously-detailed panoramic landscapes, Anglo-French artists Alpha and Chris Mason, known collectively as Hipkiss, have been collaborating for three decades on intricate drawings that interweave dystopian narratives with a personal lexicon of symbolic forms. Past works by Hipkiss chronicle fictional histories of warring clans, urban crusades, and quasi-apocalyptical societies. For Bulwark, the artists’ first solo museum show in New York, Hipkiss presents the most recent cycle of drawings in their series The Towers (2015–ongoing). The drawings pull from the myriad allegorical significance of towers as symbols for transcendence, irrational ambition, and piety.

Organized by Brett Littman, Executive Director.

Hipkiss: Bulwark is made possible by Fiona and Eric Rudin, an anonymous donor, and Selig Sacks.

Ellen Berkenblit’s first film Lines Roar (2018) presents a look into her process. Concentrating on the explosive nature of Berkenblit’s line, the film features familiar motifs from her paintings and drawings: a long-nosed female, a tiger, a stiletto. Lines Roar intermingles autobiographical footage taken by Berkenblit in both her home and studio. Also interlaced throughout the film are photographs of Berkenblit’s family and images taken by her father, who was an amateur photographer and chemist. The result is a film that combines Berkenblit’s life with her work, an intimate look at what drives the artist’s practice.

Organized by Brett Littman, Executive Director.

Lines Roar was created by Ellen Berkenblit in collaboration with directors Mónica Brand and Francisco Lopez of Mogollon. The score of the film features music by Zeena Parkins. This film was commissioned by The Drawing Center and co-produced by Anton Kern Gallery.

Inka Essenhigh

Manhattanhenge

As part of its ongoing series of commissions for the Stairwell, The Drawing Center has asked New York artist Inka Essenhigh to create a site-specific wall drawing. Essenhigh’s installation will be the third in the series, following Gary Simmons’s Ghost Reels (2016–18) and Abdelkader Benchamma’s Dark Matter (2015–16).

An artist whose influences range from Hokusai to Surrealism and Byzantine icons to graphic novels, Inka Essenhigh is known for her hallucinatory scenes that weave narratives about everyday life with otherworldly and science-fiction themes. For her panoramic installation in The Drawing Center’s stairwell, Essenhigh will illustrate the story of an imaginary contest staged on a New York City street in which new glass-and-steel condominiums with human attributes engage in a showdown with the city’s more conventional buildings. Drawn directly on the wall, Essenhigh’s anthropomorphic buildings will encircle the central motif of the drawing, a golden sunset that replicates “Manhattanhenge”—the effect of the sun when aligned precisely with the city grid—which has long been a mythic part of the city’s monumental architecture.

Organized by Brett Littman, Executive Director.

Inka Essenhigh: Manhattanhenge is made possible through the support of Miles McEnery Gallery and Stacey and Rob Goergen.

Susan York

Foundation

For the second long-term installation presented in the Lab Corridor, The Drawing Center presents a site-specific installation by the Santa Fe-based artist Susan York, which references the internal structure of the museum’s 35 Wooster Street building. Using graphite as a sculptural rather than a two-dimensional medium, York created replicas of parts of the museum’s foundation: irregular granite piers that protrude above the museum’s ground floor. Four graphite drawings, each mirroring the appearance of a pier, hang alongside York’s sculptural works, strengthening the ties between drawing and sculpture in her practice. York’s long-term installation initiates an expanded field of activity at The Drawing Center, offering an opportunity to explore drawing as an interactive and socially-minded practice. By bringing attention to The Drawing Center’s building, York’s installation encourages discussion about the importance of museums as public spaces with historical and physical presence.

Organized by Amber Harper, Assistant Curator.

Susan York: Foundation is made possible by the support of Andrew Wallerstein and Mary Sloane; Diane Karp, P.h.D; James Kelly; and an anonymous donor.